Synopsis: Kitai and Cypher Raige are stranded on Earth a thousand years after the apocalypse — and they must find help to escape.

The end of the world is very, very nigh. This year has seen the release of such post-apocalyptic fare as The Host, The Colony and Oblivion, with more to come including comedies (This Is The End, The World’s End) zomedies (World War Z) and dramas (Elysium, Ender’s Game, Pacific Rim). But so far only one movie has made me sit up and say: I would rather live through the actual apocalypse than see this one again.

That would be After Earth, the latest from M. Night Shyamalan, whose streak of duds now extends to six movies. Despite his continued brand-name recognition, Shyamalan hasn’t wowed audiences since last century’s Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Perhaps his career has been dead all this time and no one noticed?

This one, which he co-wrote with Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) based on a story by Will Smith, takes place a thousand years in the future. Smith and his son Jaden play an actual father and son named Cypher and Kitai Raige. (Yes, this is one of those movies where you suspect that more thought was given to coining cool, futuristic names than to plot development.)

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Kitai is desperate to follow in the footsteps of his father, a famous general and one of the few humans able to defeat an alien nasty called an Ursa. This genetically engineered hunter can literally smell fear, although that seems to be its only sense. Not really much of a hunter, then; no Achilles heel, but an Achilles eye, ear and throat.

Kitai gets his chance when the spaceship on which he and his dad are travelling — Cypher has announced he’s gong to retire after this mission, which is never a good idea in a movie — is damaged and crash-lands on Earth. This might sound like a stroke of luck, but in the future, Earth has been depopulated. Worse, all the animal life has, in the old man’s words, “evolved to kill humans.” Gives new meaning to the phrase “tourist trap.”

Cypher has broken both legs in the crash. Bleeding internally and apparently unable to act, he sends Kitai on a 100-km trek to recover the ship’s emergency beacon and call for help. Despite the fact that this is a forest-covered Earth, the kid needs a supply of inhalers to give him enough oxygen to survive. He also has a colour-changing outfit (made of the same stuff as mood rings) and his father’s fighting stick, which has more blades than the Swiss army. Quarterstaff? I’d wager it’s a buck-and-a-quarterstaff at least.

After Earth features some of the worst science-fiction dialogue this side of Tatooine. “Graviton buildup could be a precursor to mass expansion,” Cypher says to the pilot of his spaceship, and I wondered if the guy crashed them on Earth just so he wouldn’t have to listen to any more of this techno-babble.

Then there’s the scene in which Cypher and his wife, played by Sophie Okonedo, discuss their little boy. “He doesn’t need a commanding officer,” she tells him gently. All together now: “He needs a father.”

But what a father! Will and Jaden have had a lifetime of practicing to be dad and son, and they did a fine job together in the 2006 tearjerker The Pursuit of Happyness.

But in this one it’s as though Shyamalan told them to forget everything they knew about bonding. Cypher handles his offspring with all the tenderness of a Zen master, and at one point radios home to his wife this sensitive, 10-word dispatch: “I have lost contact with our son. End of message.”

The plot, meanwhile, has more holes than a doughnut factory. If everything on Earth is inimical to humans, why are the birds so friendly? How has medicine evolved to the point where Cypher can plug a blood shunt into his injured leg, but they no longer make non-drowsy painkillers? And do we really need a computer to flash the words “Only Survivable Route” on the GPS? Might as well let the machine narrate the story; it has better delivery skills than Smith Sr.

Meanwhile, the film squanders the chance for a Shyamalanian reveal – they were on Earth all along! – by announcing the fact in the opening minutes. It also breaks the unwritten rule that all travellers to future ruined Earth have to come across at least one moldering New York landmark.

Special effects and giant predators aside, After Earth, with its fear-smelling Ursa, seems to be trying to deliver a message that was handled much better by Franklin D. Roosevelt 80 years ago; namely, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Cypher manages to turn it into a longer and more solipsistic speech, but the essence remains.

Thankfully, evolution has also given us the fight-or-flight response to use against fearful situations. You can’t take up arms against this sea of silliness, but there’s no shame in running away from it.